


Just some One-Shots

by Miss_Apocalypto



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Anger, Blood and Gore, Borderline Personality Disorder, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Canon-Typical Violence, Crazy, Danger, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Guns, Insanity, Multi, Murder, Other, Peace, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Rage, Sleep, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, Violent Thoughts, Watching Someone Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 04:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16825561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Apocalypto/pseuds/Miss_Apocalypto
Summary: Just some BL2 one-shots I dug out of the dark corners of my hard drive. Focused mostly on Krieg and his crazy and his relationship (not necessarily romantic) with Maya, his savior.





	1. While You Were Sleeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set just after the Vault Hunters' arrival on Pandora. After Handsome Jack blew them all to hell and Claptrap found them out on the ice.

Now done with the shields, Gaige was snooping around through Claptrap’s salvage, finding a few more hypo syringes and some ammo which she divided between everyone. The cash she kept all to herself, though. Axton and Salvador had found some large swaths of orange canvas that they were stringing up to form a large makeshift tent around the furnace so all the heat didn’t escape through the huge hole in the ceiling. When they were done, everyone gathered beneath it. Maya and Gaige called dibs on the couch and quickly made themselves comfortable at each end. Krieg sat cross-legged in the snow on the floor next to Maya, apparently satisfied where he was. Salvador and Axton sprawled out across the platform in front of the furnace, using their packs for pillows. Zer0 leaned against the nearby wall. Tired and hungry, the Vault Hunters dug through their bags in search of food, except for Krieg who didn’t have anything more edible than a flare and Zer0 who abruptly volunteered to take first watch and disappeared back down the passageway to guard the door, apparently.

Axton was better prepared than the others as far as grub went. Military training had managed to instill him with a few useful skills before things turned to shit. So, he tended to have a few extra rations floating around his bag. Still, he didn’t know how long they were all going to be stuck out in the snow, so he kept the food hidden, taking out only a few scraps of jerky and a powerbar. He shared his water and his whiskey though, something everyone appreciated. Salvador was eating something unidentifiable, but that smelled unbelievably spicy, so no one bothered to ask for some. Gaige, unsurprisingly, feasted on candy which prompted Maya to toss the teen a granola bar. “Thanks,” Gaige muttered, somewhat embarrassed that she hadn’t thought to bring something more substantial, but then again, she hadn't been expecting to be so abruptly tossed (or exploded) from a train.

Maya, herself, ate another bar and some weird alien beast jerky that had an interesting blue shimmer to the meat, but was edible. Halfway through her dinner, though, it occurred to her that Krieg had nothing. So she offered the rest of what she was eating. “It’s not baby steaks, but it’s something,” she said.

Krieg eyed the food through his gas mask with dissatisfaction. It was nowhere _near_ the amount he usually consumed. His body’s metabolism was radically changed during all the experimentation he had endured. Now, he required vast amounts of food fairly regularly. So the bit of jerky and half a granola bar weren’t going to cut it. Still, the fact that she offered was nice and made his fingers itch to take it. _Let her keep it_ , The Little Man advised, _There will be some animal out there for us to kill and eat later. You can do without for now._ The Psycho pushed Maya’s hand away firmly, not violently, but not gently, either. “Eat, Pretty Lady,” he said and he got up to pace the snow outside the tent.

The Siren blinked, surprised, and nibbled thoughtfully on the remainder of her granola bar. “Not as crazy as he looks, is he?” Gaige muttered softly; she had been watching the exchange with mild interest.

“Guess not…” Maya shrugged.

“KILL THE LITTLE MAN!” Krieg shouted, startling them all as he smashed the blunt end of his buzzaxe into his gas mask. It was a grim reminder that, regardless of his softer moments, he was, indeed, a psychopath.

“Still pretty nuts, though,” Axton added.

The Mechromancer and the Siren both nodded in silent agreement. After everyone had eaten, they all began to drift off to sleep one by one, except for Krieg who continued to pace the room. Axton fell asleep with his hand on his digistructor, just in case. Even Claptrap rolled into the middle of their little enclosure and tucked its wheel and arms up into its main housing, switching into sleep mode.

Krieg hated the silence. It left him alone with the voice in his head and now that he’d met that Siren, The Little Man was particularly chatty. Despite this, the soft tug of sleep danced across his eyes and he eventually returned to his place beside the couch. Inside the tent was warm, but the night was still cold, and Maya and Gaige were shivering in their sleep. Not violent shaking, but enough for Krieg to notice. Before The Little Man could order him to do it, the Psycho retrieved the blanket from his bag and tossed it haphazardly over the pair of them. _Good job. Didn’t even have to tell you to do it this time._ The Little Man meant it to be encouraging praise, but the sound of his voice grated on Krieg’s nerves.

Maya’s eyes opened slightly and she watched Krieg curl into the snow beside the couch through the small slits. She didn’t know what to make of him. He seemed to flirt with the line between crazy and sane. Beyond it being tiring and frustrating to communicate with him, it also made him all the more dangerous. He was volatile and bloodthirsty, operating primarily on instinct. In some ways he was closer to an animal than a man and she hated herself for thinking it. If there was one thing she learned while at the abbey it was how oppressive others’ judgments could be. _They all wanted a puppet goddess to vent her wrath across the masses…_ she cringed inwardly and curled beneath the blanket, scrunching her eyes shut, tightly… _Those people were so afraid of me. Thought I was a monster…_ Her eyes wondered back toward Krieg and she finally understood what it felt like to be one of those terrified thousands who prayed for mercy at the abbey. _Never again…_ she promised to herself as much as to Krieg, then she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Sometime during the night, Krieg awakened to the sound of screams bouncing around inside his head. The Little Man was dreaming, beginning to remember what happened, but not yet able to grasp it consciously. It worried the Psycho. His entire existence hinged on the sane man's inability to deal with the pain—that white hot moment of sundering that heralded Krieg’s birth. It set his teeth on edge. Fear-induced adrenaline crawling over his skin like spiders, making him restless. Making him want to kill. But he couldn’t, not when he was surrounded by so many dangerous people. He might be able to get one—two at the most before someone put him down. Krieg understood nothing if not survival and it was within his best interest to check his urges. It was hard though. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, his breathing irregular, and his mind full of crimson. His body heat rose, sinking him further into the snow as it melted beneath him. It was a hunger that would consume him if not sated and The Little Man wasn’t around to tug on the leash. _Kill. Blood. Pain. Kill. Blood. Pain._ It played on a loop in his mind, bouncing off the fissures of his brain like ricocheting bullets, punctuating every urge with an exclamation mark. It was chaos. Blinding, blurring, bewildering, and beautiful. _Kill! Blood! Pain! Kill! Blood! Pain!_

That was when she stirred. He heard her move against the groaning springs of the couch as she repositioned her body in her sleep. His hearing wasn’t always so acute. Only in moments like this when he was more primal than modern and The Little Man wasn’t using his skull as a soundboard. He sat bolt upright, his spine rigid and straight. His first impulse was to swing his buzzaxe, bring it down into her sleeping frame before she had the chance to even open her eyes. Spin the blade in her neck so she couldn’t scream. But then her eyes opened, blurry and heavy with sleep. She looked at him. The firelight danced in her gray eyes. Her blue lipstick was smeared a little, mussing her appearance with a strange vulnerability. He remembered what his other half had told him by the train tracks: ‘ _She could kill you with her mind.’_ Had that been what stayed his hand? The fear of death? Or had it been something else? She _did_ look beautiful nestled on the couch beneath the blanket he had given her. The hunger passed, eased out of his gut with a sigh from her lips.

“Nightmares?” she whispered to him, the concern apparent in her voice. Krieg nodded, slow and silent. “I’m sorry,” she said, “Do you want to go for a walk? Clear your head?” Krieg shook his head, maintaining the same silence. She stared at him, her brow knit, unsure what to do. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, “Try and get some sleep, okay? It’s almost dawn.” Then she laid her head back down onto the arm rest and closed her eyes. Moments later, she was asleep again.

 _Didn’t kill anyone, so that’s a good thing_ , The Little Man said suddenly, causing Krieg to jump. His voice was off. Softer than usual and emotional, he’d finally surfaced from his nightmares and whatever he had seen was still clinging to the edges of his consciousness. Maybe it would fade. Maybe it wouldn’t. Only the dawn would tell whether or not the sane man still needed his protector. Dreams were so hard to hang onto and the horrors lurking in the annals of their memories were no small things. Krieg didn’t know what would happen if his other half managed to pull himself back together, and he didn’t want to find out. What the saner man didn’t understand was that Krieg had always existed within him. Deep, in the darkest, most murderous corner of his brain. All those violent, sexual, insatiable impulses he never acted on cross-stitched together with threads of torture and freak-science to make the Scarecrow, the Psycho, the monster to chase away the fear, to conquer the new twisted biology thrust upon his body, to relish the pain. He was finally let out of his cage and never wanted to go back in. The Siren complicated things. Krieg liked her. Found her attractive and his body was naturally curious about her. But she made the beast _want_ to behave. _Don’t fuck this up and maybe things will get better for us,_ The Little Man warned and Krieg rolled his eye, laying back across the snow to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally part of a failed attempt at a fully realized FanFic for BL2. This is just the end of the first chapter when everyone meets each other. Thought about posting the whole thing, but it was too long. Best part's the ending, anyway. Enjoy.


	2. Burn, Baby, Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just kicking Flynt's ass.

Maya looped her fingers through Gaige’s belt and yanked the younger girl off the vent as hard as she could, causing them both to lose their footing and fall. Seconds later fire erupted from the very vent Gaige had been standing on. “You really saved my ass!” the teen exclaimed, her eyes wide and her chest heaving from fear and adrenaline.

“GAIGE! MAYA!” Axton’s voice called through the ECHO, “You guys okay?” He couldn’t see them through the pillars of fire, but his ECHO display assured him that they were alive. Still, it didn’t hurt to check.

“Yeah, just surrounded by flames…” Maya answered.

“Then MOVE your asses!” he barked, “Flynt’s headed your way.” He tried to steer the captain away from the others by tossing out his turret and a few grenades, but the flaming bandit only had eyes for the Siren and Mechromancer.

“Shitshitshitshit,” Maya swore under her breath, jumping to her feet and yanking Gaige to hers, “Letsgo, letsgo, letsgo!” She dropped a grenade to slow Flynt down just as he jumped through the fire at them. Gaige summoned DT who immediately tried to tear into Flynt to no avail, but distracted him long enough for both women to bolt to the other side, behind the relative safety of Axton’s sabre turret. Salvador covered their approach with maniacal laughter and gunfire, showering the attacking bandits and psychos with bullets and expletives. Zer0 was focusing his energies on the reinforcements approaching from the other side of the bridge.

And Krieg—was now riding Flynt’s shoulders like a kid begging for a piggyback—only he was smashing his buzzaxe into the side of the captain’s mask while screaming, “POUNDS OF FLESH!”

“I can’t get a shot off without hitting your dumbass,” Axton growled to Maya, “Rein in your Psycho…” The words died on his tongue as Flynt positioned himself over one of the vents in an attempt to rid himself of Krieg.

The flames engulfed them and for a brief moment, Axton, Maya, and Gaige all looked on in horror, taking Krieg for dead. “Dude,” Gaige breathed, “What a way to go…”

“I EMBRACE THE FLAME!” roared the Psycho and when the flames died down, Krieg was still clutching to Flynt, his entire body aflame, and laughing hysterically—apparently unharmed.

“Holy shit,” Maya muttered, stunned.

“Light the fuse, bitches!” Gaige cheered, recalling Boom-Bewm’s tagline with glee, “He’s ready to blow!”

“Focus on reinforcements,” Axton commanded, “Krieg’s got this one.”

So they did, content to let the Psycho wrestle with the bandit leader. Though Maya did continuously cast glances in their direction to make sure Krieg was maintaining the upper hand. After a few moments of struggling, shouting terrifying nonsense, and the whirl of his buzzaxe, Krieg managed to yank Flynt’s mask off while the captain was still on fire. The result was immediate. With the protective mask removed, there was nothing to stop the flames from ravaging Flynt’s face and he inhaled sharply in surprise, scorching the inside of his nose, mouth, and throat. The fumes and the chemicals he used to set himself alight burned his lungs, causing him to gasp and wheeze for clean air. Only more chemical flame crawled into his mouth, kept smoldering from the waning billows of his damaged lungs. Flynt sputtered, choking, clawing at his throat, each rasping breath a white hot iron through his chest.

When the buzzaxe finally came down, it was a mercy. Krieg didn’t think of it as such. He only wanted to open the bandit up and play in his innards. “I LOOKED INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS AND I ATE IT ALL!” he declared gleefully, yanking his buzzaxe from Flynt’s smoldering chest cavity.

The others picked off the last of the reinforcements and then joined their insane friend. “That was awesome!” Salvador shouted, punching the air.

“Dude, that was one wicked ass kill,” Gaige declared, holding her hand up for a high-five. Krieg looked at the girl, his head cocking to one side with confusion. He didn’t understand what she wanted. “Come on, don’t leave me hangin’!” Gaige urged and she wriggled her fingers to encourage Krieg into raise his hand.

“I don’t think he gets it…” Maya said.

Gaige scrunched up her face in consternation. “Put your hand up,” she instructed and the Psycho cast a wary glance in Maya’s direction who looked too amused for it to be some sort of trick, so he held up his massive hand and Gaige smacked her metal one against his. “Hell yeah!” she exclaimed. Krieg continued to hold up his hand and glare at the teen through his gas mask. “We’ll—uh—we’ll work on that later,” she sighed, “You can put your hand down now.” Krieg actually shrugged and let his hand swing to his side.

“Did you know that would happen?” Maya asked, passively examining the damage Krieg had wrought on Flynt’s body. It was meant to be more of a rhetorical question than anything else. She knew Krieg couldn’t organize his thoughts well enough to arrange a sentence.

 _Oh, this is gonna be good,_ The Little Man’s laughter rang through Krieg’s head, _Go ahead, buddy. Try to explain it to her. See how far you get._

“Gnashing teeth, gnawing the flesh…FirefirefireFIRE! Cook the meat ‘til it falls off the bone for the feast. Face is protection against the slaughter,” Krieg growled, barely maintaining his volume, “I burned him hollow.”

Maya’s brow knit. “Is that—is that why you wear one?” she asked, apparently understanding, however vaguely, “So you don’t inhale the fumes?”

 _Holy shit. She **actually** understood that?_ Krieg’s only response was to laugh hysterically, nodding enthusiastically as he jumped up and down on Flynt's charred corpse, apparently unable to contain his joy any longer.

“Smarter than he looks,” Axton chuckled, “Alright, let’s head out. The sooner we get to Sanctuary, the better.”


	3. Strip the Flesh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you do when your Psycho loses his cool? Seriously, no chill.

“He’s not calming down,” Axton said warily as he watched Krieg’s psychotic rant continue into the open space. There was nothing left for him to kill. They’d already cut a bloody swath through Frostburn Canyon in search of the Firehawk. Now, without more targets to disembowel, Krieg was having a hard time winding his bloodlust down.

“Yeah, that’s not looking good…” Gaige added, crossing her arms over her chest and watching Krieg tear apart a dumpster.

“Just let him work it off,” Salvador insisted, “He’s gotta get that shit out of his system.”

“He could hurt himself,” Maya said and, as if to illustrate her point, Krieg cut his hand open on the jagged edges of the torn dumpster.

“Or us,” Axton tacked on.

Maya chewed on the tip of her tongue in a moment of indecision. It certainly seemed safer to just let Krieg tire himself out, but she was now genuinely concerned about the amount of blood pooling on the ice. That she cared at all only caused her further frustration. She didn’t come to Pandora to play nursemaid with the locals. Still, Krieg had more than proven his worth in the last few days during their journey to Sanctuary. He was a real part of their bizarre little team and everyone was finally beginning to get comfortable with one another. Even the others took Krieg’s colorful language as an interpretive challenge. There were stranger things on Pandora and each of them were in no position to judge Krieg’s unique mental state. And then there was the fact that she still felt responsible for the Psycho, no matter how many times he’d proven capable of taking care of himself. With a frustrated growl she deconstructed her weapon. “Cover me,” she said reluctantly.

“You’re going unarmed?”

“You think waving a gun in his face is better?” she asked, jumping off the ledge and down onto the ice, “He’s just spent the last couple hours killing people _with_ guns aimed at his face.”

“This is such a bad idea,” Gaige groaned.

“Blue’s gonna get herself killed,” Salvador agreed.

“Overconfident,” Zer0 added, “Siren’s in over her head, prepare for the worst.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys,” Maya sighed as she approached the raving psychopath.

“We’ve got your six—Pretty Lady,” Axton muttered through the ECHO, teasing her with Krieg’s nickname. The Siren rolled her eyes, but didn’t bother to reply to the snickers she heard through the earpiece as she approached Krieg.

The blood was still roiling, hot through his veins, setting his core on fire, the pressure building up in his head until he thought it would explode. Wanted it even. He could almost imagine the sheer ecstasy of release at the moment his skull would give way. A bullet maybe? That would be the ticket. Maybe the strange, faceless man could do it with his sniper rifle. Just put him out of his misery so he didn’t have to feel it all anymore. His brains forced through the jagged opening of bone and onto the ice in a beautiful, crimson stain of too many voices. The silence alone would be worth it.

The screaming was almost too much. Their screams. His own terrified cries—and _hers_. Like a twisted symphony of pain, the arrangement of her agony invoked startling images of moments too brief, too hot, and too precious to hold onto. He still couldn’t remember who she was or even what she looked like. Just fleeting flashes of images through the darkness like snapshots of features taken far too close and out of focus. A right eye. A left ear. A birthmark. Her lips. He could almost assemble the pieces into a coherent face, but the next violent scream shattered the image like a rock through stained glass. There wasn’t enough to sew together. Just the cracked fragments of her face and the gut-wrenching echoes of her terror slicing through him like pieces of broken glass, skittering up and down his spine and vibrating his bones. In moments like that, he could feel how close he was to the edge—of tumbling down the sheer cliff of his insanity, giving in to Krieg entirely out of fear and desperation. Another release. Another easy way out. But that’s what The Little Man wanted. He needed to be back in control, the only voice in his head, or it all needed to end. Being trapped in the ivory prison of his own skull was killing him.

Krieg, on the other hand, _loved_ it. The blood, the screaming, the pain. Especially the pain. It was what he was created for. When The Little Man couldn’t take the pain, he made a beast that lived for it, longed for it, thrived off it. It was more than just pleasure, it was sustenance. _Strip the flesh. Salt the wound._ He needed to feel it all to feel alive. Drown himself in the searing, tingling firing of his nerves. Feel it dance across his skin with heavy, leaden footsteps stabbing into his raw flesh. More. More! MORE! It made him more real if he kept the pain from The Little Man. If he selfishly kept it all to himself, it gave him a stronger foothold. He wouldn’t slip so easily. His other half wouldn’t be able to vest control back from him. He was safe. He could keep living. He didn’t have to go back into the cage. He was _more_. And the more he took, the less there was for The Little Man.

Somewhere amidst the chaos of bloodlust and terror, they heard the Siren. Her voice calling to them, luring them away from the din of insanity blaring through their shared skull. Like her namesake, her voice was beautiful and sang in ways so starkly different from the jagged peaks and valleys of their shared heartbeat. Soft and whispering. They wondered if she knew what she looked like to them. If she could see herself shining through their eyes would she understand how otherworldly she was? The Little Man had compared her to a thousand sunsets in the beginning and a goddess and an angel since, but it all seemed to tragically fall short now, because she was more. Not just beautiful. That seemed less important than the sound of her voice or the fierceness burning in her eyes. She was more than a silent deity to be worshipped from afar or a demure guardian of vague and ethereal disinterest. She was _more_. More than human. More than divine. And she was a beacon of previously abandoned hope. Even Krieg sensed her potential importance and it made him restless. Not now. Not when he was having so much fun. She was the external force of The Little Man’s desires. _She_ could make him go back.

“NEVER STOP THE KILLING!” Krieg declared defiantly, “NEVER!” The Little Man was too bogged down in traumatic memories to realize what was happening. For now, the dog was off its leash.

“Whoa there, pull back, Maya,” Axton hissed, “I don’t think this is going to work.”

Maya hesitated. Her progress slowed to a standstill. “Easy there, big guy,” she cooed, “It’s time to calm down now. There will be more to kill in just a moment, but you need to wait, alright?”

“I FEEL IT ALL!” Krieg disagreed.

“Yeah, I bet you do, but it’s time to chill now.”

“NO! DON’T DO IT!” he warned.

“Krieg…”

“I’M GOING TO PUT MY PAIN INTO YOUR SOUL!” he roared and he charged her, buzzaxe raised high over his head.

“DON’T SHOOT!” Maya cried back through the ECHO desperately as a few shots from Axton punctured the floor at Krieg’s feet, trying to deter the Psycho. “I got this.”

The Psycho was far larger than any other she had ever faced in hand-to-hand combat. Though her life had been highly isolated at the abbey, the monks had taught her well. She was supposed to be their vengeful goddess, after all, she had to be capable. They trained her Siren skills and turned her body into a weapon. Even if she lacked superhuman power, she still would have been a dangerous force on the battlefield. The melee was her specialty. Elegant and powerful martial arts. She didn’t learn how to handle a firearm until much later in her twenty-seven years. In some ways, she was more comfortable without a gun than she was holding one. Still, size was not always what mattered in such a close, physical encounter.

Krieg was big, heavy, and obvious. When he charged her, she knew where he was going to swing, how he was going to do it, and at what angle. So when he was close enough and the hard muscle of his dense, towering body coiled power behind the buzzaxe, she moved. Ducked low and pushed off the ice. The slick surface took some of the force out of the maneuver, but not much. She was still able to slide between his legs, catching his ankles and ripping his base out from under him. He struck the hard ground with his face, the cold harsh against his bare chest, both his hands on the axe and unable to catch his fall. With a little help from her Phaselocking abilities, she abruptly spun him onto his back, not giving him a second to regain his footing. She grabbed him by his belt and pulled him toward her. By now, Krieg had figured out that he had not been successful in killing Maya and was about to raise his axe again, but she caught his wrist with her foot and jammed her knee into the bicep of his other arm, pinning him to the ice. She sat on his chest, her Siren tattoos glowing cerulean blue.

"Damn, girl!" Axton and Gaige crooned in impressed unison before devolving into a game of jinx.

Again, Krieg’s physique was working against him. He was stronger than her, but the weight of her digging into his arm was preventing him in generating enough force to throw her off and, on his other arm, her hand clamped down to prevent the same. This compounded the fact that his center of gravity was different because of his build and the extra muscle weighing down his unnaturally bulky shoulders. Quite simply, he couldn’t get up because she was adding her weight to the heaviest part of his body and holding him there was the subtle throbbing hum of her Siren powers. So he writhed, trapped, like an animal, snarling and beating his head against the ice. “Krieg!” Maya snapped, trying to get his attention, but it wasn’t working, “Goddamnit, Krieg! Look at me!” With her free hand, she grabbed the bottom of his gas mask and jerked it down, forcing Krieg to look in her direction. But sometime during the scuffle, the mask had been jostled and he couldn’t look through the eyehole properly. Maya couldn’t adjust it without loosening her grip on Krieg, so she chose, instead, to pull the mask off entirely.

The garish white light of the afternoon sunlit ice blinded him. There was nothing but the harsh flash of searing sunlight. Then the gentle skitter of the mask across the ice as it slid away. His mind vaguely registered that the mask had been removed from his face. Then there was the pain. Sharp and slicing across his face, through his ruined eye. The damn thing always hurt, but it was particularly painful now that it was exposed to the open air which tasted foul without the filters from his mask. The Pandoran smog burned his throat and he roared out in pain, crazed and terrified. The overstimulation driving him into a frenzy. He was on the verge of a downward spiral of violence when he felt the pressure in his right arm alleviate. Maya had released the pressure point to grip the back of his head with both hands, swinging his vision back into position to see her face. “Stop,” she said, “It’s alright.”

It took a few moments for the searing rage to melt out of him, but it did and when his breathing slowed, he was able to hear The Little Man again, pleading with him to calm down. _Christ what happened? Why is she on top of us? What did you do? Cool your shit or this will be the end for us both…_ Surprisingly, the saner voice soothed more than he irritated and Krieg finally fell silent, staring up at Maya and making no attempt to unseat her. _God, look at her face. You scared the shit out of her!_ Krieg saw the fear. Her gray eyes wide and the grip on his head tight. _The mask,_ The Little Man realized, finally taking full stock of the situation, _She’s seen our face…_ As if in response to the silent revelation, Maya’s eyes shifted focus slightly and he knew she was looking at the hideous tangle of a scar that cut through his right eye. Unconsciously, he held his breath, expecting to see disgust tangle her delicate brow.

Much to his surprise, her eyes softened, her grip eased, and he felt her tattooed hand slide to the side of his face. The blade of her thumb caressed the bottom tip of the scar at his cheekbone. There was no more fear. There was no horror. Just a sad and curious examination of his injury. Perhaps pity? At the very least, sympathy. All softness—tenderness. So starkly at odds with the sharp edges of his shattered psyche. She looked at him as if memorizing his face so she could imagine his expression when he shouted nonsense through the gas mask. That was half the battle sometimes. Communicating with him was hard enough as it was without the benefit of facial expressions to point in the general direction. That aside, she was momentarily confounded by how _normal_ Krieg’s face appeared to be. He suddenly seemed a lot less crazy without the gas mask on.

Even with the scar tearing through his right eye, he was so much more human than he had been before. One brown eye and one blue which was destroyed by whatever had marked his face. His thick eyebrows were black and amongst the only hair she had ever seen on his body since his head, chest, and underarms were all bare. Hard jaw and sharp cheekbones. Strong, solid features and full lips. A small scar cut through the left corner of his mouth, puckering his lips on that side ever so slightly, giving him a soft, permanent grimace. He had been handsome once and still was, she supposed, if in a somewhat crazed sense. She was more concerned about his eye, however. Now she understood why shifting the mask around caused him pain. It was still very raw and perhaps even infected. Cautiously, she skimmed the edge of the wound to see if it was as tender as it looked. He flinched with a low growl and her hand withdrew.

“Uh—do you guys need a moment?” Axton asked through the ECHO, drawing both Siren and Psycho’s attention. Gaige began making loud lip-smacking kissy noises through the microphone.

Maya groaned inwardly, but did not immediately stir. Slowly, she removed her foot from Krieg’s wrist. “How about it, big guy?” she asked, “You with me?”

“Blue,” he grunted in response and she moved off him, offering her hand to help him up. He already knew she was stronger than she looked, but he was still surprised when she easily pulled him upright.

Retrieving his gas mask, she handed it back to him, but he fumbled with the straps, his hands slick with the blood from his cut hand. “Give it here.” She took it back from him, fiddled with the straps, and had it back over his face in the next moment. “You should get that looked at when we get back to Sanctuary,” she said, “I know Zed’s—scary as hell, but it might hurt less afterward.”

 _Because he’ll have killed us,_ The Little Man pointed out.

“That’s probably not encouraging,” Maya sighed, as if understanding the look of disbelief in Krieg’s face, “We’ll—uh—cross that bridge when we get there, I guess. For now, let’s find a hypo for that cut and get moving.”

“Strip the flesh!” Krieg declared in his typical psychotic fashion, but with considerable calm.

“And salt the wound,” Maya finished, nodding, “I know, big guy, I know. Let’s get a move on.” And they rejoined the others, picking up some hypos on their way into the Firehawk’s chambers.


End file.
